Lisbon, April 24, 2025 (Lusa) - Lisbon's Belém Tower has closed for conservation and restoration work as part of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), which is scheduled to last a year. The company undertaking the works has announced intermittent reopenings, although they are unlikely.

According to a statement from the state-owned company Museus e Monumentos de Portugal (MMP), which manages the Belém Tower, "at each new stage of the progress of the works, which will take place over the next few months, the possibility of the Belém Tower being open to the public will be assessed, always taking into account the safety of visitors and its workers".

When questioned by Lusa, an official source from the public Cultural Heritage Institute, the organisation in charge of implementing the PRR in heritage, explained that this is a conservation and restoration contract for the Tower of Belém, awarded for €1.05 million and with a one-year deadline.

The Belém Tower is one of the most visited public monuments in Portugal, having welcomed more than 377,000 people in 2023.

Listed as a World Heritage Site since 1983 and built between 1514 and 1520, "its decoration boasts Manueline symbolism - calabres that surround the building, topping it off with elegant knots, armillary spheres, crosses of the Military Order of Christ and naturalistic elements", as can be read in the information available on the UNESCO National Commission website.

At the end of last year, the president of MMP expressed his concern that several facilities in Lisbon run by the public company would be closed for works in 2025, coinciding with a tourist campaign focussed on heritage.

At the time, the president of MMP emphasised that "the outlook for the year is not very encouraging in relation to the facilities [under the company's remit]", so they were "trying to draw up communication strategies here that will allow us to take people to other places to try to overcome this issue".

TDI/ADB // ADB.

Lusa